The larva stage of butterflies and moths that looks like a worm and eats leaves before transforming into a flying insect.
From Old French 'chatepelose' meaning 'hairy cat,' literally 'chat' (cat) + 'pelose' (hairy), combining appearance features into one word.
Caterpillars are nature's ultimate transformation artists—they completely dissolve inside their chrysalis into a cellular soup called 'histolysis' before rebuilding as a completely different creature, one of biology's most mind-bending metamorphoses.
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